"here was history," "the graveyard" and "empty is"

here was history

here was history gray & ancient,
somnolent sickness we wore like clothes
treasured memory;

i listen to the impatient dead
who never existed, however much
i wish they had lived their absence

on ancient roads once. the air itself
heavy on their hopeless shoulders,
stones & crows

& nothing is called atonement.
they hoped for barbarian hordes
& possible glory, i hope little

but living less, no memory to be

the graveyard

between the mountains forests & a graveyard
faceless;

there are stones & arrogant oblivion -
they are torturing darkness

implacable. there are people too
but they do not matter

empty is

empty is as empty does
& Bodhidharma would not have approved
all this useless,

so here is the cemetery insensate.
he was the blue-eyed barbarian & stubborn,
staring at the wall glorious

like a junkie observes the history of ceiling
everything irrelevant being invisible to him
as it should be

& there are often dead men entering poems
so there are corpses to defile, not
​Bodhidharma, he was to cool for suicide

or life: he was made of time
& there was no Buddha, no dharma,
no karma: everything was murder

& perfectly fine